


like this

by littleleotas



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: F/M, Fluff, M/M, Multi, Polyamory, i know what the word is but garrus doesn't, idk what this is sometimes garrus thinks things and pokes me until i write them
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-17
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 04:05:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9367202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleleotas/pseuds/littleleotas
Summary: Garrus takes account of the state of things.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I tried to write Thane/Garrus and it took 3 (three) sentences before it became Thane/Shepard/Garrus. Everything I touch turns to polyshipping. Whoops.

It's like this: nature abhors a vacuum. Garrus has no mercy in him, the good deserve peace and the evil deserve punishment. But those he orbits are full of it, full of forgiveness, second chances, third chances. _Change._ The idea that someone can _change_ , that good and evil don't really exist, it matters what you do and you can always choose to do the right thing, no matter how much bad you've done in the past.

It's like this: Garrus can lead, but he doesn't like to. Leading requires faith in yourself Garrus doesn't know how to have. Leading requires faith in the people you lead, but Garrus has never stopped looking over his shoulder. He trusts them, of course. He just likes it better when they lead.

It's like this: free will requires responsibility. Guilt weighs on Garrus like it's the sky and he's Atlas. Their names are scratched on his visor and they live out of the corner of his eye. He thinks Thane should know a thing or two about remorse.

“I don't think of myself as a good or a bad man,” he tells Thane. “Just...an instrument. Of justice. I hoped.”

Thane hums. “There is no such thing as a good or a bad man. There are good and bad actions. You choose the way.”

“And all your hits?”

“I have asked forgiveness for the lives I have taken,” he replies, evenly, calmly. “And since then I have done nothing for which I need to ask forgiveness.”

“But how do you forget?”

“The person you were when you did the things of which you are ashamed is not the person you are now. You ask forgiveness, and you change, and you move on.”

It's like this: he follows the brightest star. Turians don't smile the way that humans do, and humans don't smile the way Shepard does. And she smiles at him. There are different smiles, the one that doesn't quite reach her eyes when she's being nice to someone who's being rude to her, the rueful one when someone brings up something she'd rather not talk about, but the one she gives to him and Thane is like the sunshine on Palaven, so bright it blinds you, full of love and trust and hope. She smiles at him, like he was deserving of that light, and somehow with each smile he comes closer to believing he is.

It's like this: science is just an explanation of magic. They have lips and he doesn't. They should get sick, somehow, an allergic reaction, a cough, something, anything, but they don't. They could ask why and try to figure it out, and they could probably find an answer, but Shepard says, “Don't look a gift horse in the mouth.” Garrus doesn't know what that means, but what he does know is there is a pair of lips at his neck and one pair making its way down his chest, and where he is solid she is soft, and where he is rough they are smooth, and it may be the hallucinations Thane's skin gives them but he's pretty sure those two make him see colours he didn't know existed. He's happy to leave that unexplained.

It's like this: language fails him. Surely there must be a bigger word than “joy.” That word is too small for what he feels seeing Shepard's head fall to Thane's shoulder as she laughs, and Thane's smile as he gently strokes her hair. What is the word for seeing the people you love share a look that they then turn in unison to share with you? What is the word for her jumping into his arms and pulling you over to surround them both with your arms? What is the word for her chin on his shoulder while he sits in front of her on the floor reading aloud because she won't wear her glasses, and them grinning and saying, “What?” after you enter the room and chuckle at them? Maybe Shepard knows it. He'll ask her later.

It's like this: biology does funny things. “How does this work?” he remembers her giggling the first time. And it shouldn't, but it does. Three fingers intertwined with five, three fingers intertwined with – what was it, four? five? who knows what that fused thing counts as – it felt right, was the point. And maybe it shouldn't work, but surely the fact that it does means it can't be all bad. Garrus doesn't always believe the universe gives you signs, but he likes this one.

It's like this: he was always a bad turian. Once he thought that made him a bad man, but it matters, she said, that you care about good and bad, and it matters, he said, that you choose to be better. If he had been a good turian – good at _being_ a turian, good in the way that turians are supposed to be – he wouldn't have been the person who left C-Sec, who fought Saren, who became a vigilante, who joined a group that hated him to follow one who loved him, who fell in love with a human and a drell. You change one thing, you change everything. And he wouldn't change a single thing.

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, you can find me at ridethecricket on Tumblr and littleleotas on Twitter. If not, my name's Alfred and this has been It's A Small World.


End file.
